IMO, I think 'acerate' is more than acceptable, it's just a matter of one's opinion, as well as who's doing the editing. On top of that, it's also plastered all over OneLook & learning a new term like acerate has it's pluses especially if you were to come across the word on say a documentary about plants, like I have with many words that I've picked up through crossword solving, as well as constructing.

For instance, I watched a documentary presented by David Attenborough and one of the animals highlighted in the doc was the "kob", an african antelope, a beautiful creature with an amazing set of horns; yet, kob has never been used ever in NYT crosswords, and acerate has only been used in pre-shortzian times - and, for whatever reasons these may entail, I'd like to know... ?

Overall, I'd love to see more ecology-based words throughout crosswords, as we have a serious overall lack of knowledge on an individual basis about what's in our own back yards, let alone what's going on our planet altogether.